Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie’s Marriage Started Cracking After By The Sea & You Can See Why

In 2016, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's divorce brought us to the end of an era. Brangelina, one of the only certified A-list couples, was no more, and no one really saw it coming. However, according to an new interview with Jolie for The Hollywood Reporter podcast Awards Chatter, as per E! Online, the writing was on the wall after they filmed By The Sea, a 2015 film about a couple trying to save their marriage.

"I thought it would be a good way for us to communicate," Jolie said of working on the film with her then-husband. In By the Sea, Jolie and Pitt play a couple trying to repair their marriage during a vacation in France. The trailer itself is a trip — Jolie's character cries and throws back pills, distraught. Pitt's character spends a lot of time leaning on a desk, seemingly frustrated. The movie does not depict what you might call "a healthy relationship."

Jolie continued, "In some ways it was [good], and in some ways we learned some things. But there was a heaviness probably during that situation that carried on and it wasn't because of the film." Jolie wrote and directed the film as well. She added that her role the movie's conception contributed to the tension between the couple.

"It was something that we were dealing...things happen for different reasons, and things…why did I write that exact piece?" she said, describing the experience. "Why did we feel that way when we made it? I'm not sure."

In the months since the divorce, both Pitt and Jolie have been surprisingly candid about their marriage. "Things got bad," she told Vanity Fair in July. "I didn’t want to use that word...Things became 'difficult...We’re all just healing from the events that led to the filing." Pitt revealed in an interview with GQ Style that he listened to a lot of Frank Ocean following the divorce. And, he was sober for the first time since college. The fallout of the divorce is almost its own film — the various allusive quotes and photoshoots all feel cinematic and sad.

Jolie ultimately concluded that she doesn't regret making the film. "A piece of art can be something that's healing or something that's difficult, " she said. "I'm glad we did that film because we did explore something together. Whatever it was maybe it didn't solve certain things, but we did communicate something that needed to be communicated to each other."

Watch the trailer for By The Sea, below.